NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research shows "alarming
levels" of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States,
principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest
University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health.
The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity
exacts on the heart and blood vessels.

"The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further
gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on
cardiovascular disease mortality (death)," Burke and colleagues
warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the
Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or "MESA" study,
researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African
American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one
third to one half were obese.

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Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the
study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese,
suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not
considered "inevitable."

The investigators also found that obese adults, compared
with normal-weight adults, had higher rates of high blood
pressure (up to more than twice as high), abnormal lipids (two-
to three-fold higher), and diabetes, despite a "huge number"
being on costly medications to lower blood pressure and lipid
levels and control diabetes, Burke said.

"As the obesity numbers increase further, we will spend an
even larger amount of health care dollars just treating risk
factors," Burke said.

Obese adults also had more silent vascular disease (blood
vessel disease that causes no symptoms); they had more
atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and thicker heart
walls, even after adjusting for "traditional" risk factors like
high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

Given the higher amount of silent blood vessel disease with
obesity, Burke said "one could worry that this will cause us to
reverse our 50-year decline in cardiovascular disease mortality
due to the obesity epidemic." This will likely be accompanied
by an increase in diabetes, other heart disease risk factors,
and silent disease - "on top of the aging of the baby boom
generation."

"Our findings support the imperative to redouble our
efforts to assist in increasing healthy behaviors and to
remove...barriers to maintaining a healthy weight," Burke and
colleagues conclude.